Yesterday I received the most wonderful letter from my friend Luise. She had included a message from Jens Lekman and it made a dreary day much better. Tomorrow I'll get on a train to visit her in Berlin, listen to indiepop and hopefully have a good time.
Today I started reading Kazuo Ishiguro's "Never Let Me Go", but had to stop immediately because it made me physically sick. This is so annoying, I don't even know what to say. I really want to read this book, but I get dizzy every time I see the word "donor" - I can guess what it's all about even though I haven't read anything about the book and its plot. How can I stop myself from being so squeamish? Other books I couldn't read because it was either that or throwing up:
Thomas Mann - The Magic Mountain
Albert Camus - The Plague
Jeffrey Eugenides - Virgin Suicides
Any advice?
The one book I could not finish because it made want to through up was Sartre's Nausea.
ReplyDeleteAnd if you feel like going for a piece of cake in Berlin, let me know...
Never Let Me Go isn’t that good, anyway, on the whole. If that is some kind of consolation.
ReplyDeleteSometimes your capacity to be moved by books makes me a bit envious, even if it can take on negative forms ... but I feel so callous in comparison.
That being said, I found Ishiguro very disturbing too, in a slow and creeping way (much worse than Virgin Suicides or The Plague) ... it’s weird.
Julia, I'd love to - are you going to be at the indiepopdays as well?
ReplyDeleteI'm moved by books, yes, but in this case it's just my general stupidity about medicine. I passed out at school when they showed us videos about pregnancy. Ugh.
I just finished reading "Never Let Me Go" and I had the same problem. Every time the donations were mentioned I would feel sick to my stomach! And the night I finally made it all the way through, I had trouble falling asleep because I was too traumatized by the thought of it all!
ReplyDeleteAnd I can relate to your reaction to medicine-related things - once a teaching was telling us about her knee operation and I got so overwhelmed I started crying. Everyone thought I was just being really sympathetic!
hey! wir haben uns lange nicht mehr gesehen und ich flieg am 22.sept.! hast du mal zeit in den nächsten zwei wochen? würd mich freuen!
ReplyDelete"Never let me go" is not that good, the beginning is, or at least to me, the descriptions of that "school" and the relationships between the students werw pretty good... But then, maybe it made me feel too uncomfortable, anyway, it looses pulse towards the end.
ReplyDeleteAnd Virgin Suicides made me sick too, really sad and i got a cold while reading it!
I've been unable to go past fifty pages or so of Crime and punishment, because i feel too close to Raskolnikov...and somehow the tone makes me feel incredibly guity about everything i've done wrong in my life...
have you tried the remains of the day? this is my favourite ishiguro. i would also recommend atonement by ian mcewan and the best book i've read in ages is: the imperfectionists by tom rachman.
ReplyDeleteSo the general consensus seems to be that it isn't a great book anyway, I guess that's good. Really sad I won't be able to watch the film though!
ReplyDeleteEveryone seems to agree that Crime and Punishment is a particularly intense book, I haven't read it though. Maybe when I feel very happy and stable.
The Remains of the Day and The Artist of the Floating World are both books I've really enjoyed. Can't say I liked Atonement though - it was blatantly "inspired" by The Go-Between by L.P. Hartley and felt like a rip-off.
ich habe never let me go in 1 1/2 tagen gelesen, aber es war seltsam, ich glaube stark daran dass der film gut wird! keira knightley und carey mulligan!!!
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